If you mean "porn is media designed to provide sexual gratification, thereby satisfying the biological imperative for sex," video games are best understood as media designed to provide gratification for the needs up at the top of Mazlow's hierarchy: success and significance. They're an opportunity to see demonstrable increases in power, achieve clearly defined objectives, and be rewarded for these things. These experiences are hard to come by for many people, just as sex can be.

But that's not all video games do. They can genuinely provide opportunities for community, novelty, and play--all important human needs. (Porn can too, if deployed properly; I'm sure there are thriving, happy communities of porn producers and aficionados.) But since you asked in the context of porn, I'm guessing what you're asking about is the danger of video games to produce supernormal stimuli and thereby result in overconsumption, i.e., porn is to sex as high fructose corn syrup is to fruit. I think that's most present when games are used to gratify the desires for success and significance.

The blue light thing I can explain - the blue spectrum of light hinders melatonin production and makes it difficult to get a good nights sleep. There is a program for your phone and computer (flux) that will shift towards red as it progresses towards evening.

Sounds like you haven't found the Civopedia in the top right corner (f12 I think?). It will give you much more detail than the little dialog boxes that pop up. IIRC Civ4 does have the annoying problem that you can't close dialog windows, but there's always the option at the top to examine your city, where you can look more closely at what each building or unit does, or to "see the big picture" for techs. Most techs unlock new buildings, units, civics, or reveal new terrain features, and all of that is shown in the tech window (f6).

You can start on the easiest difficulty and just build things at random to see what they do for your first few games, or leapfrog a bit by reading how-to guides in the War Academy section of Civ Fanatics forum. Hope that helps!

Add as many social ones as you can think of. It becomes easy to put yourself through the wringer alone, but it ends up being very isolating. Find three people to give a small amount of money to. Smile and make eye contact with everyone for ten minutes as you walk down a busy street. Have a conversation with someone very different from you every day. Embarrass yourself in public. Wear silly clothes, read a poem on a street corner.

It might be xướng quá which would mean something like "so good" but it sounds a little odd in this context. It could also be sớm quá which roughly translates to "too early" which is again strange in this context. Without knowing the tones it is kind of difficult to tell exactly, but these are the only ones I can think of right now.

It's clearly not for everybody, but if you want an intelligent and impassioned defense if the book, I'd suggest the various videos John Green has done about it. Here's the first: https://youtu.be/kqfThmVIIAc

Like anything, practice makes perfect. I've gotten better by remaining silent until I have a full-ish answer. Then, responding with that. Which can spark further discussion. Of course, this assumes the question is in my wheel house of knowledge.

This. The trick to responding on the spot is not being controlled by anxiety. Get comfortable with silence. Get comfortable saying "I don't know." Get comfortable answering a question with a question. Once you know you have those tools in your toolkit, you won't feel quite so overwhelmed by being on the spot. You will be able to give your best answer.

Source: I'm a lawyer. People ask me complex, ambiguous questions all the time and wouldn't pay me if I sucked at answering.

You have a nice thing. You didn't earn it. It was given to you. You used to brag about having this thing, and you were punished for it. So you learned to pretend you don't have it, or that it's not as nice as it seems. Attention being drawn to your nice thing makes you afraid, because of the past punishment, and your fear triggers this protective response automatically. The problem is your patterned response is being interpreted as deceptive and/or condescending, which is preventing the social connection you seek. So you need to either pattern a new response to the fear, or prevent the fear reaction to the stimulus (assuming you can't avoid the stimulus).

Both of these are difficult but doable, and you can do them simultaneously. One way to do this is to have someone you trust periodically praise your intelligence in a way that would otherwise make you uncomfortable. You reduce/eliminate the fear response through exposure to the fear without negative feedback, and in a safer environment you get to practice the response you want to pattern.

Two things to keep in mind as you consider what kind of response(s) you want to pattern. (1) Gratitude. If someone is complimenting your nice thing, they are trying to make you feel good about yourself. Think about their effort in doing something positive for you. Say thank you even if you don't feel gratitude, and physiologically you will feel it a little more. This is helpful because the physiology associated with gratitude is a reliable antidote to your fight-or-flight response. (2) Honesty. If you're feeling self-conscious, in some circumstances the best thing to say is, "I'm feeling self-conscious right now," and explain why. This won't help you in the classroom, I'm guessing, but it may on a date. At the very least you're avoiding the negative consequences of the old patterned response. It some circumstances it may be an awkward overshare, but in the right place it's a brave act of vulnerability.

You can start this right now if you want. I know you're capable of it. You're obviously very smart. ;-)

Judging by her campaign website, she wants stricter background checks and to remove the ability for violent criminals to own guns. If she's said something different in a speech then I apologise for my ignorance, bowever Trump bas tought me to only go to a candidate's website for information on them.

Okay, that's not a big deal. I'm not really opposed to all that. Well, I am, but it's not as bad as I thought she advocated, and I could tolerate those policies.

How is this unconstitutional? The rights of the people to keep and bear arms is already "infringed" in many places: You can't own certain high-powered weapons and often you're not permitted to carry weapons in public, all apparently constitutional as it hasn't been struct down by the Supreme Court.

It's already infringed so by all means infringe it more? That seems to be your argument. I'm sorry but it makes no sense. The Supreme Court has not struck it down because they're politicians too. To think they actually want to interpret the Constitution correctly is cute.

And it's worth remembering the kind of weapons available when that amendment was drawn up. If you wanna talk about the founding fathers' vision: they wanted everyone to have free access to muzzle-loaded muskets.

As I said, I'm a historian. A US history focused historian. Of all things, this argument bothers me more than any other.

No. They did not want people to have just muzzle-loaded muskets. I didn't know the 2nd Amendment read: "The right to bear muzzle-loaded muskets shall not be infringed."

They wanted the people to be able to defend themselves against government tyranny. That means the people are allowed access to the same equipment the military is allowed access to.

If you wanted a cannon, then go ahead and buy a cannon. Merchants often equipped their ships with the same levels of firepower as many naval warships.

Private citizens owned the same guns the Army had standard issue. This is what was intended. No restrictions on what type of firearm you could have.

It has nothing to do with citizens having access to muskets, and your dismissing it as that simple frankly really pisses me off and tells me most people in favor of gun control have absolutely no idea what the spirit of the Constitution reads.

I want to change my view. I really do. I don't want to argue. I didn't come here for that. But to change my view, your argument has to make sense.

I'm not going to try to talk you out of relying on the founders' intent to decide what's constitutional in general, but there's a good reason it's not very helpful here: the drafters of the bill of rights were talking about the rights of individuals against the federal government alone. The bill of rights did not apply to the states until the passage of the fourteenth amendment some 80 years later. The founders were operating on the assumption that the states could regulate arms ownership (or choose not to), as evidenced by the opening clause of the second amendment. They did not intend to create a total power vacuum with respect to the regulation of arms. So even if you think intent is important to interpreting the Constitution, the circumstances that shaped that intent have changed.

And still without arguing about reliance on intent, I'd hope you'd agree that a judge can genuinely want what's best for Americans and also say: I don't care what white guys who have been dead for hundreds of years wanted, I'm going to do what's right for us today. You may view that as an abrogation of duty, but it doesn't mean they're not doing their damnedest to do the right thing.

The laws "infringing" the right to bear arms have or can be challenged through the judicial process, yet they survive. Thus, in an important sense, they are constitutional, because they have been allowed to survive by our collective process of determining what is and isn't constitutional.

You may disagree with the conclusions of that process, and you may want to influence that process to come to different conclusions by voting for a president who will appoint judges more likely to see things your way. But I think it's valuable to recognize that there are smart, good people who disagree about this, and the process we've agreed on to resolve our disagreements has landed on the current position.

I can imagine his responses already, this is a very good point. Nobody likes being confronted or told something they are doing is inappropriate. Even more so when they know they are doing wrong and thinking nobody has noticed.

He openly says he was abused as a child. Even if it's at s subconscious level for him, what he's doing isn't ok. Just writing it on out 'whisked kid away and whispered in ear' shows how creepy the behavior is. The worst part of this is it's robbing our family of a healthy relationship.

No matter what the outcome is here we will never be able to trust him with our kid. After we confront him it will solidify the silent rules we've already implemented.

He may work very hard to get you to feel sorry for him. There are accounts of Jerry Sandusky going to talk to parents who were suspicious of him and basically saying things like "You must hate me. I wish I was dead." If you're right about him, remember that one way or another he's very good at staying close to people who would be safer if they kept him away.

If it were me, I'd take this approach with your family: "Here's what I've seen, and here's how it makes me feel at these family events. I'm not saying he's done anything wrong, but as a parent I'd rather be paranoid than neglectful. I want your help in making me feel safe at these family events, or I just can't bring my child to them anymore because it's too stressful." Make it about your feelings rather than his faults or any facts, and there can't be any argument.

Can you elaborate on this strategy? I know that navigator can help climber move around but how does that increase the number of tiles revealed. I thought it could only help move the climber into more ideal areas so they can reveal tiles.

The climber always carries the navigator with him, and the navigator only moves himself by moving the climber, which moves himself. So you can always move to blocked tiles, and on the navigator's turn you can move three tiles per action. Move the pari around the board turning over tiles with one or zero sand on them, removing as little sand as possible. You'll get a lot of parts and equipment before the storm gets to five cards. Use your dune blasters on tiles with 5+ sand on them that you need to excavate, terrascope iffy choices. You still have to watch your water, but you're always together so the oases are easy to coordinate. It's an order of magnitude easier than any other duo.

Took a look, I definitely see what you mean. I can imagine developing personalities around each of the gods over time, much like we've done in a more low-stakes way with King of Tokyo. Good suggestion!

Hi /u/ndphillips! I’m going to take a slightly different approach. I am not in the business of talking people out of EA. I think it’s a totally sound philosophical position, and if I had to choose between having more or fewer subscribers to it in the world, I’d take more. I’m just going to tell you why I’m not one of them.

I was a philosophy major in college, and primarily studied ethics. I wrestled with effective altruism and utilitarianism more broadly. I went to see Peter Singer speak and studied with some of his former students and academic peers. I spent a lot of time wondering if I was a good person. I tell you all this not to say, “Well, when you get a bit older son…” (I don’t know your age or gender anyway), but to let you know that I put in the time on this question.

Until at least my senior year, I would have agreed with your position entirely. In retrospect, I think it was because it was the position I found most invulnerable to argument, and I was in a setting where I had to spend a lot of time defending my beliefs. So I picked the one that seemed the most bulletproof.

The first chink in the armor for me was casting doubt on the idea that “There is no moral difference whether the person I can help lives next door or in Syria.” That’s an axiom, not a fact, and I don’t believe it anymore. And I can give you a variety of arguments for why, but the real reason I changed my mind about it is that I’ve known many, many people that I consider fundamentally good, and the number who subscribe to this view is pretty small.

I don’t think I figured out why I changed my mind until years later in law school. At the time, I would have given you the laundry list of arguments for the moral significance of proximity to suffering and said they were more persuasive. But the smartest professor I had in law school spent a semester teaching us how to make arguments dance. He could run anyone full speed into a wall no matter what they were arguing for, no matter which side of what position. And yet, at the end of the semester, he told us how every important belief he held, he held not because it was the most logically sound (because he could make them all logically sound), but because someone, somewhere that he admired had believed it. Relationships, not arguments, are the best tool for changing minds. Even when we think we're swayed by an argument, you might say what's going on is we're aspiring to be more like the arguer.

And in fact, this is my main dispute with EA as a movement. I’m all for more giving and more emphasis on impact, but EA just has the worst sales pitch ever. It focuses on arguments over relationships, and one way or another the arguments all seem to come down to: “Do it our way or you’re a bad person!” People will chase joy to the ends of the Earth, but for the most part they will only do the bare minimum required to avoid guilt. And the easiest way to avoid that guilt is to just stop listening. You’d think that a movement so focused on effectiveness would give more thought to the effectiveness of its marketing.

So I suppose I want to say: I don’t want to change your view on giving, and giving effectively. Keep it up. If it’s sustainable for you to give till you’re right down to the poverty level, go for it. (This, incidentally, is where I part ways on that idea: I’ve tried life at the poverty level, and I’m pretty sure I’m maximizing utility for the world long-term by being more comfortable because I’m more productive when I’m happy). But if you’re trying to change other people’s view to your own, there are better ways of going about it.

Hi Dr. Doty! I enjoyed your interview on On Being and am looking forward to your book. I'm interested in organizational design choices that can increase compassion and altruism. Does your research suggest specific actions or polices that a business, community, or government could implement to increase compassion and altruism overall?

I like that you posted this question in this sub. I don't think it would be obvious to everyone in your position that this is a mindfulness-related question. So yeah, I think you're moving in the right direction.

Mindfulness comes into it by realizing that you're experiencing fear in that moment--fear of hurting someone, fear of being rejected if people know what you're really thinking--that is paralyzing you. I don't think it's super useful to get upset that you're experiencing that fear. The goal (or at least the first goal) is not to eliminate the fear, but to notice that it's happening and accept it. Noticing it is the first step out of paralysis.

If you're like most people, the first thing that will happen when you notice your fear is you won't accept it. You'll get angry. Anger is how the brain breaks fear paralysis (that's why "fight" and "flight" are part of the same danger response). You will be pissed at yourself for being passive, or you will be pissed at the other person for putting you in this position. Now you have to notice the anger, and not let it control your actions any more than you let the fear control your inaction.

The noticing part, whether it's fear or anger, takes practice. Look for signs in your body. Did your breathing change? Are you tensing your stomach or your fists? Did you stop moving, or start moving nervously? When did your behavior change?

From there, you'll need to find your own hacks for stepping through the fear. (Not escaping it. Remember, your goal is not to eliminate the fear but to act in spite of it.) For me, it starts with a deep breath and then a sort of distancing mantra: "I am afraid. I am experiencing fear. There is fear." This is how I step back from it and see it as just another part of the world in front of me. If the circumstances allow it, the absolutely most helpful thing for me is to tell the other person exactly what I'm feeling before I try to say what I want to say. Admitting fear in the moment is a courageous thing, and sometimes it makes the actual thing you want to say much easier by comparison. I actually do this at the beginning of business meetings now sometimes if I really need to say something hard or scary. The people I love to work with respect that kind of vulnerability.

This will be a slow process at first, but think of it like learning an instrument or a language or how to drive. It starts as a slow, conscious process and eventually becomes automatic with practice. You're a novice at this, so forgive yourself for taking some time to learn it.

Thanks for asking the question. I didn't really realize how much I'd thought about this until I started writing.

Not ashamed to admit it: we took a mulligan on our first game of Legacy when something like this happened. Triple cascade on the second draw I think. My wife does not take losing well. I was sitting there holding the panic level stickers in one hand and the ongoing happiness of my marriage in the other. I think I made the right choice.